I flew the coop when I was just eighteen years ahead of newborns. For an unidentified reason I was in rush to start life on my own, so I just did it…

10th June 2010 was a big day for little Tom. At that point he had never worked in his entire life and had been provided everything he needed by parents. Despite of being a sissy boy, he mustered some manly balls heavy enough to let him enroll to university in 1500 km away from his home and give it a shot. Fast forward 5 years and he declares it was the best decision in his so-far-short life…

Here I am. Five and half years spent on this great island with ever-lasting depressing weather where people ask how are you? instead of hi and where using indicators is as common as snow on the Sahara Desert. The luggage of experience and life lessons I had to learn to carry would have never been that big if I stayed in my home country being supported by my superiors.

Whether you are a youngster, a parent or a life veteran, living abroad can caught you off guard regardless of your experience. It’s like cornering yourself into a difficult situation that you need to get out from. It has plenty of advantages; you get to:

quickly learn to handle stress and pressure

fight for your own rights, read and protect yourself people who want to harm you

step out of your comfort zone

hear and learn language first-hand from native speakers

view the World through eyes of those who praise other values in life than you

make decisions on your own and see where they lead you

discover cuisine, tradition and history rooted in another piece of our Rounded Land

The list just goes on, so there is no point turning this entry into a book.

Yes, it is difficult. Yes, you will face plenty disappointments. Yes, you will want to return home and do it the easy way. That’s just life and being always happy is impossible. If someone tries to talk you into believing they’ve been living peaks and never valleys trust me it’s just a cover for their miserable life choices. To fall is to learn. We learn the most when we are flat on the ground. Therefore let failure into your life, lie down as much as you want, but remember when you finally get up you will be twice as strong.

Would you rather: do it, live your life to the fullest and broaden your personal horizons or not do it and keep regretting it and wondering what it would be like if you actually found the courage? What I am trying to say is: just fucking do it.

Having a dream and feeling this inner overwhelming warmth when you make a huge step towards it is simply irreplaceable. Being conscious that your carefully formulated plan prior to date has put you closer to the final destination is fantastic and worth every effort.

To answer the question that surely is buzzing now in your head “but why Japan?”, I would have to write a separate article to fill your curiosity in – so that it makes sense to you, of course. It’s never been without a reason and you’d need to learn a bigger picture to understand me. Let’s leave it at that for now and get to the point of what this entry is about.

There Is No Going Back

Dreams aren’t made true easily – hence the most of human-beings lock them up in their personal dreamland never to see the daylight. I wasn’t aware what I was signing up for in Oct 2015 by finalising the purchase of those flight tickets for my partner and myself. I soon realised quitting my current life over the course of half of a year can quickly grow to a size of a life-overtaking chore.

For you to fully comprehend what’s entrapped in molting of daily commitments of mine I’d need to invite you to have a closer look into my private life. This is what we have done so far (random order):

filed a notice of flat tenancy termination

terminated car finance agreement (more to come on this topic)

my partner handed an employment notice in

cancelled broadband and landline

organised a car parking space for a secondary car

sold at least half of our household out and still selling more (furniture, accessories, electronics etc)

organised a self-storage room in a local storage warehouse for essentials that we don’t want to sell or give out

packed and shipped all books (we love books) and any “won’t-need-in-long-time-but-shame-to-sell” items back to parents for long term storage

organised a first month of accommodation in Tokyo

researched and purchased convenient insurance tailored for a trip to Japan

ordered two Shinkansen (bullet-train) 3 weeks tickets to travel around the country

roughly planned attractions around Japan that we want to see and budgeted them in

bought two return flights tickets London to Tokyo

redirected mail from our place of living to a friend’s house

went through basic language course to communicate with the locals

… and believe me I could easily dig up ten more things. We haven’t accomplished everything, yet.

Inside A Wallet

… or rather a bank account. It’s infeasible to estimate the cost of the entire trip upfront, but I can tell you what we have spent so far. Every backpacker (as I think we can call ourselves that) craves for different experience and upholds life standard he is comfortable with. For us, an average budget is alright. I don’t think you can truly experience life in a foreign country by spending as little as possible.

Below is the cost breakdown for what we have spent so far on miscellaneous things (all prices are for 2 people):

I will be assisting my clients remotely directly from Japan, which will provide additional income as we go along. Since this is an incomplete and brief list of major expenses, I will go into details in a separate post once we conclude the trip – that is June 2016.

Time-wise

The trip will last 85 days from 3rd March 2016 to 26th May 2016. We will live about 2 months in Tokyo and travel around Japan for at least 3 weeks. Below are a few places we aim to visit:

Nagoya

Takayama

Kanazawa

Kyoto

Mount Koya

Osaka

Hiroshima

Okunoshima

Miyajima

Nagasaki

Fukuoka

Kitakyushu

Tokyo

Okinawa

Feel free to let me know about other places worth visiting.

In Da Mood

Get up every morning and say to yourself “I CAN DO IT!”

Enough of technicalities and figures.

Despite of all the money and hassle, we are very excited and eager to put our current life on pause for 85 days and start over when we return.